Network news anchor, New York

I felt a lot of pressure on Election Night. Some people out there are rooting for me to fail. But going in, I thought, I can do this, and when I finished, I thought, You know, I was right.

It's a job. It's an important job, but it's a job. And I try to keep it in its proper place. Other days I feel like it's consuming me and kind of taking over my very being.

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I didn't dress up in a blazer and sit at a desk when I was a little girl and read the news, so my life has unfolded in a way that I haven't really had that much control over.

I never went searching for the Today-show opportunity — I never saw myself in that role. I never really saw myself in this role. Timing has been everything for me in my life. It's been interesting so far. It's been challenging.

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Being the youngest of four, I developed a certain amount of wily charm that got me through when maybe my brains weren't sufficient.

Anybody who worries all day about North Korean nukes is just going to fret their lives away. And get very bored.

My humanity is authentic -- there's a lot of feigned humanity on television, a lot of cloying, unctuous humanity.

I try to be direct. That's sometimes one of the hardest things to do. I suffer from the syndrome that many women do: They don't want to be called a bitch. With women there's very little leeway for that kind of expression, which is healthy.

I had sort of a perfect life until I was forty. Jay used to say I was born on a sunny day — everything just sort of went right for me. Everything changed when I turned forty.

After Jay died, I addressed people who are in that parallel universe, because it's so isolating and I wanted them to know that I understood that they were almost in this surreal, dreamlike state of fear and anxiety and frustration and powerlessness.

I hate when people say, He lived a good long life. My husband died when he was forty-two. He got ripped off.

What is love? That is risky business. I'm definitely open to it. It's much more complicated when you're forty-nine with an almost teenager and a teenager and you have a very public life. It's hard to make the pieces fit together.

If you're not willing to lose, then you'll do whatever it takes to win, and you become someone you're not.

Celebrity.
I hate that word.

I hate the wordpanties. It's a cheesy word for underpants.

I play the piano. When I'm sad and depressed, I play. It makes me cry and it makes me feel better. Is that weird?

Oh, my God, I'm so boring.

When you're raised Presbyterian, you're supposed to become a member of the church in seventh grade. I had a tough time when our minister showed me a diagram of Jesus on a throne surrounded by my family. I had a tough time with the idea that Jesus was more important than them. I didn't become a member.

I feel sometimes like I am the personification of a Rorschach test, and that people pin their own hopes and dreams or disappointments and frustrations and displace those things sometimes.

I'm in a bit of a box.

You have to be unwavering in your convictions that you're doing something good, because there are a lot of circling vultures that will eat you alive.

My younger daughter read something on some AOL blog, and it really bothered her. I said, "When people say something like that, they're not talking about me as a person, they're talking about me as a commodity." I said, "Please, don't take it personally for me."

You guys even take a shot at me. You have something in the November issue, something about how since I've become an anchor, you don't know me anymore. You don't know me anymore? Bite me.

I try to have dinner with my kids every night.

They see me taking chances with this job and trying my best.

Even if the person doesn't go off-message, sometimes events do.

Sometimes I think I want to write a book, and sometimes I think, How can I remember everything that's happened to me? I can barely remember to put on deodorant. But I'd like to. I've certainly had a different life than the life I imagined I'd have.